Greilsammer’s Latest Exercise in Transformation

Pianist David Greilsammer (from his SFP event page)

Last night San Francisco Performances (SFP) returned to live concerts in Herbst Theatre to launch its Summer Music Sessions 2021 series, its first-ever venture into summer programming. Over the course of eleven days, SFP planned twelve concerts, including both afternoon and evening offerings this coming Sunday. Things got under way last night with pianist David Greilsammer making his SFP debut with a solo piano recital.

Greilsammer made his San Francisco debut in February of 2011, playing two piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for an all-Mozart program organized by conductor Bernard Labadie. By that time Greilsammer had already released two albums of Mozart piano concertos performed with his own Suedama (“Amadeus” spelled backwards) Ensemble on Naïve Classics. About seven years later, Greilsammer shifted gears (as well as record labels) with the release of Sounds of Transformation on Sony Classics. The core of this album was Maurice Ravel’s 1931 piano concerto in G, which seemed to reflect his collegial relationship with George Gershwin without taking a “deep dive” into jazz. Working with both a chamber ensemble and a jazz combo, Greilsammer decided that such a “deep dive” could be taken through transforming (hence, the album title) compositions by Baroque composers Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Henry Purcell.

Before listening to this album, I was fascinated by the concept. Sadly, that concept looked better on paper than it sounded in performance. Such was the case with Greilsammer’s solo performance of last night’s program, entitled Labyrinth. The program consisted of selections (most of them relatively short) by twelve composers from different periods of music history, including the world premiere performance of a new work by Ofer Pelz. These compositions traced a path into the heart of a labyrinth, after which that path would be retraced (with new selections for each composer) in reverse, as if one were returning by following Ariadne’s thread.

The online text for this program stated that the performance would last 65 minutes and that all of the selections would be performed without any breaks. Sadly, the performance lasted closer to 90 minutes, which made for some mad dashes to get to Civic Center Station in time for the last BART train. Furthermore, the basic impression of leaving the labyrinth quickly took on a rather tedious here-we-go-again rhetoric. That tedium was reenforced by Greilsammer’s heavy-handed performance technique, which came closer to suggesting taking a jackhammer to the labyrinth walls rather than retracing one’s path.

Back in my days as a researcher in Silicon Valley, I quickly developed an annoyance with any sentence that began “Wouldn’t it be cool if ….” Greilsammer’s effort to develop a labyrinthine program structure probably seemed like a cool idea as he began to figure out how to realize that structure. Sadly, his planning and implementation showed little awareness of the basics of the listening experience, leading me to wonder whether or not he would be able to sit still and listen attentively to a recording of last night’s performance.